Making research useful.

L. Catan, Youth and Policy, n.76, 2002, pp.1-14.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence in interest in evidence-based policy and practice (EBPP) in the UK. The many models of EBPP range from the customer-controlled to the researcher-initiated and controlled. To disseminate work from its Youth Research Programme, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) used a model of EBPP that attempted to mediate the relationship between research and the use of research. This approach actively fostered a learning relationship between users and providers by providing a series of one-day dissemination workshops at the end of the five-year research programme. The workshops provided the opportunity for researchers to present key findings to relevant policy-makers and practitioners, for policy-makers and practitioners to debate the implications of the research and broaden their understanding of the research by questioning the researchers, and for researchers to better understand the applications of their work. These `digestion' workshops allow the user-provider reslationship to be realised in a personalised and interactive way.